City Man From the Eyes of a Youth

Hello, Friend

Hello, friend. I am 16 years old. I was born on summer of the year 2000. I grew up in a small barrio in an unknown province in the Philippines. Yes, we weren’t having the kind of life that the common millennial babies had experienced, we were too different from them but we are lucky.

I spend most of my younger days spoiling all my physical attributes, not minding if I get too dirty, muddy or even have scars all over my body. At those times we were having the time of our lives, we were free. We go to school to learn and have fan, to write and read what is written. We weren’t aware of the world that we don’t know. We have it, the world and we were enjoying it.

We sure are children and that ended.. because I am not a child anymore.

Or am I?

Moving Out From the Rural Banks

The city is sure a good place, city lights at night or even in day time. City life is sure awesome, everything was laid just before our eyes. The only thing bad about the city is, it is too expensive. Say for the likes of me it was. I am but a small lady out of the rural paradise. I don’t have anything but those things my parents gave me. My parents give me enough, enough for my own consuming. I don’t need to ask for more after all my parents know every little thing that I needed.

But the city’s young men and ladies aren’t like me. They don’t just have enough, they have plenty, plenty. Plenty money, toys, gadgets, plenty wants. To be honest I am not envious, I felt lucky. Why? They don’t know something I do. They don’t know street games, they don’t know how to swim, to build sandcastles, to ask fishes from fishermen without payment, to get soak by the seashore, to get scolded by making an obvious mistake, to laugh at an old man’s jokes and to get scared by the old nannies horror folk tales. They don’t know that. They don’t know how the fresh air tastes like, how real fun feels, how to be a real child.

They certainly are knowledgeable more than I am, in the visual world. But I know more than just fake world and imagination because I tasted the real world and the reality.

The Jungle of the City Men

The city is not simple. They taught me a lot of things. They sure know sure know some things too. It was fun at first but the city is too busy, the city is a jungle after all. They work for their own improvement, for their own satisfactory, in short for their own selves. That sure is boring. I always thought, why do we need to focus on ourselves when we know our self too much. The city is complete but it lacks something bigger that it has.

The city lacks life. Laughter here is like the clowns’, painted to be liked, to earn money and benefits. City animals are well aware of their predators. They know too much of what is harmful. Let me tell you of what is needed by a city man and what is harmful to him.

Manila City Lights | Source

The Things That Keep Him Going

Is the money he is keeping

A man is no city man without the money. The city is like a whole kind of a lottery game that can in an arcade that is operated by money. There is no life if there is no money. Unlike in my old place, neighbors are not so friendly around here, it’s like you and you’re family is one country that needed to negotiate with your neighboring ones just to save your economy, just to get along with the floods of globalization. You can’t rely on someone you don’t know around here, unless you have valuable things with you to exchange for a help, or should I say service.

As I said earlier it is too expensive you won’t survive if you won’t buy.

Is the car he’s been taking care of

Social status is important but cars nowadays are more than that now. Everyone can have any vehicle they wanted, you can fake its price anyway. You don’t own the road in the city but you got to own something to claim the road. It is an everyday sport, taking over the vehicles of one another. You can’t be too slow, or else you’ll going to be left behind, not by those you get to compete on the road with but with the time that is worth every money that you needed.

Say transportation is cheaper here than those back at home. Seventeen kilometers here cost eight pesos back at home it cost twenty five more or less. Pretty much helpful. But drivers don’t care about you and you’re appointments. They work on their own and they needed what you needed too, money. It’s an unending competition.

Cars are used not for transportation now, but to chase the time that is fast passing by like a strike of a lightning.

Is the job he’d been working hard for

The city is a city because of the money it has and the city has that money because it has too much workers. The city men always wake up earlier than back at home. They work harder here than back at home and they get home when their house’s lights are already off and the little angels they’ve been working for are in deep slumber already. Work is the everyday punishment for those who care here in the city. This is where city men get their money for their most precious investments in life, the future of their young ones.

It’s tiring, work is. But work is the new home now. Work is the new family now. Work is the new city men now.

Is the family he cherished the most

Everyone is busy in the city. You seldom get a time for rest because city men likes to convert time into money. They don’t have choice now, they are the backbones of their own mistakes. Maybe it is too hard to watch for your family to get hungry or not having any thing they wanted, so hard sometimes you wanted them gone. But you know you are fooling yourselves if you wanted them gone because you keep them for your own sake.

City men had no time for recreation, the world is moving fast it is making them insane, but what keep them in track is the loved ones they left at their own homes. City men need something that can make them feel useful and that what keeps them alive. Their family proves that they are still needed, after all the strong won’t be that if there was no weak.

The Things That Kills the City Man

All is for his life and his family

The city man doesn’t get enough fun because he is all on his own. His neighbors don’t care about him because he doesn’t do as well. What he’s doing to his neighbors is what he is doing to his reflection, to himself. Does he care? No. Does he know? That is basically what the answer is, he doesn’t care because he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know because he doesn’t try helping his own and his own is his brothers from different mothers.

Surely, here in the city everyone is moving so fast, you barely remember what you did the whole day. Everyone is so fast because every day is a competition or a race. Everyone wants to get to the top. They all wanted what is on the top, top jobs, sales, discounts, money, wants and all answers to one characteristic of a city man, self-centric.

He wants what he can get

The city man has a lot of freedom in his books. He wants too much but not all can he get. He doesn’t care of what is not attainable and easily loses hope. They say they are just being practical, you have to be stable on the things you can only acquire. They hate rejections or let’s spill the truth, they are scared of REJECTIONS. They had too much that they can’t handle it anymore.

They say why do they need to spend more time on something they cannot have whole?

He likes to imagine

And so if he doesn’t get what he wants, he’ll be fine with less. And leave all he wanted on the dream world. This is like the scary virtual world, but unlike us teenager our addiction is gadgets, theirs is much worse, vices.

Oh, the feeling of the smoke sucking my lungs feels great, this must be what it feels to have a great life. I love this drinks, I get to say all of my frustrations because of this liquor. I am in heaven, this must be real.

Pathetic. They left reality for the fraud.

He settles for what he is now

When he gets contented with so little that he has then that is the end of being a city man. City man are what makes the city, they are the epitome of the word progression in the economy of the place, if they had nothing to help for the growth that the place is now facing, then he is merely a bug in the system, a virus that kills the body, nothing but plague is what he brings, to himself, his family and the city itself.

I Am a Youth, After All

Yes, friend. I am merely just 16 years old, what do I know about the real world? I barely know how to write and to arrange my thoughts. I am still trying to understand what I ought to in the next times. Am I naïve? I don’t know, but these are, the things I wrote in here, all the truth that I see and try to put words to be expressed.

I do lack information and experience but through writing my mind out, I will grow up.